It is the practice of Orthodox Jews that no ‘creative work’ can be done, for example, on the Sabbath or Jewish Holidays. For convenience, the Sabbath and Jewish Holidays will be collectively referred to herein (at times) as the Jewish Holidays. The Orthodox Jewish laws forbid work to be done on the Sabbath, such as using a household cooking appliance, and constrains the Orthodox. Jew from causing the cooking appliance to change its normal pattern of operation during the Sabbath, e.g., an action by the user that illuminates or changes a display, activates an audible display, turns on a light, ignites a flame or heats an element. Disconcertingly, many new household cooking appliances have control systems with a variety of visual and audible indicators and aids, such as interior lights, that make it difficult, if not impossible, for Orthodox Jews to operate the cooking appliance in compliance with the restrictions in place during the Jewish Holidays. For example, most refrigerators and ovens have an interior light that is activated by the user of the cooking appliance by opening the door. Under the Orthodox Jewish law, if the interior light remained constantly on or off during the Jewish Holiday it would comply with the law and it was not activated by the opening or closing of the door. This has resulted in the practice by Orthodox Jews of unscrewing or removing the interior lights of the cooking appliance, deactivating light switches, or turning the light on prior to the Jewish Holiday and leaving the light on continuously for its duration.
Another example, with respect to ovens, is that they must be turned on and off to cook. A generally recognized solution is to turn the oven OFF prior to the commencement of the Sabbath (for maintaining food hot with the oven's residual heat, since no cooking may be done) or ON before the commencement of the Holiday and leaving it on until after the termination of the Holiday (or Holiday/Sabbath combination). Alternatively, the oven could be left off during the Sabbath and no warm food would be available. Obviously, these solutions are very inconvenient and are a disadvantage of the current cooking appliances, and some older models.
A “Sabbath Mode (English) control system—(also known as Shabbos Mode (Yiddish) or Shabbat Mode (Hebrew))—is a feature in many modern home cooking appliances, including, but not limited to, ovens, refrigerators and air conditioners. Such a system is intended to allow the cooking appliance to be used (subject to various constraints) by the Sabbath-observant Jews on the Sabbath and on the Jewish Holidays. The Orthodox Jewish laws are restrictive and complicated. While raw food may not be cooked on the Sabbath, food that has been cooked before the Sabbath may be kept warm until mealtime (under certain conditions). On some Jewish Holidays, or on Jewish Holidays directly preceding the Sabbath, the food may be freshly cooked during such Holiday. However, turning the heat on during such a Holiday is prohibited. Transferring a flame from one which was lit before the commencement of the Holiday is permitted. When the Sabbath and a Jewish Holiday coincide, the more restrictive Sabbath regulations prevail.
In the past, the problems associated with these laws could be solved by merely lighting a stove or oven before the Jewish Holiday began, and using the heat over the course of the day or days. However, in recent years cooking appliance manufacturers, e.g., ovens, toaster ovens, have instituted a safety feature that automatically shuts off the heating element, whether it is gas or electric, after a number of hours. This renders this technique useless for those who observe the Orthodox Jewish Laws, because the oven will not stay lit for the required length of time.
When a cooking appliance, such as an oven, has a (built-in) Sabbath Mode control system, the standard six- or twelve-hour automatic shutoff is overridden, and all lights and displays (for example, a light that might go on when the door is opened) are disabled. In more recently designed ovens, the “Sabbath Mode” control system will often feature the ability to adjust the temperature of the oven during the Jewish Holiday without any observable feedback of this change to the operator of the oven. This is not particularly relevant to the Sabbath in that the temperature may not be changed at all, but such temperature adjustments may be useful on Jewish Holidays, wherein according to prevailing Orthodox opinion, adjusting the heat is permitted (under certain conditions), but changing a digital readout on the control panel is not.
To resolve this issue, in some “Sabbath Mode” ovens that are controlled using a keypad to set the temperature, there is a pseudo-random delay triggered after a button is pressed but before the temperature change takes place. There are those who are of the opinion that touching the keypad and closing a switch to complete a circuit is not allowed. To overcome this objection, there is, for example, a Tweaker, see Torah Technologies (http://torahtechnologies.org) that emulates old manual ovens by adding a knob that ‘confuses’ the accurate temperature measurement in a beneficial fashion.
Contemporary electronic ovens currently being sold are no longer simply ovens that cook, but rather sophisticated, computer driven electronic devices. While in the past, the Jewish religious laws pertaining to using ovens on the Sabbath and Jewish Holidays were fairly straightforward, nowadays simply opening and closing the ovens can entail violations of Sabbath and Jewish Holiday laws. The Sabbath Mode on many of the ovens sold today resolves many of these issues, and is useful. However, in June 2008, a number of prominent Jewish legal rabbinical authorities (poskim) signed a public pronouncement stating that it was unequivocally forbidden to raise or lower, the temperature by reprogramming on a Jewish Holiday (Yom Tov) using the Star-K Kosher Certification organization's (Baltimore, Md.) approved Sabbath Mode feature. Doing so on the Sabbath has never been permitted.
More particularly, the development of a Sabbath Mode operation for ovens has as a goal of permitting the raising and lowering of oven temperatures on the Jewish Holidays (but not on the Sabbath). The change in temperature settings is accomplished by pressing keys on a keypad that is connected to the microcontroller built into the oven. Pressing the keys while in Sabbath Mode does not result in an immediate change in oven temperature nor does it have any other observable effect. Allowing this activity is based on the presumption that pressing the keys is merely a gramma and is therefore permitted on the Jewish Holiday.
An indirect action is called gramma, from the Hebrew root meaning ‘to cause’ something to happen. Two conditions (which are based on the same principle) are necessary for the action to be considered gramma:
(1) At the moment, that the gramma action is performed, no simultaneous action should take place, and no sequential chain of action should be started. The initiating action must be insignificant from the point of view of the Sabbath. For example, turning on a delay timer that will cause a specific action after a preset time is not gramma. It is like shooting an arrow, which is considered a direct action even if the result takes place far away and after a delay. Placing a jug of water in the path of a flame to extinguish it or changing the setting of a Shabbat timer, under limited conditions, on the other hand, do not cause any immediate effect.
(2) An independent factor, which was prepared before Shabbat or is created automatically, will take effect latter on and be influenced by the action that was performed by the person. Only then will the desired effect take place. In the previous examples, the flame will reach the water later on, just as the timer switch will be activated after an indeterminate delay.
However, as mentioned above, it has recently been decided by a very significant segment of rabbinical authorities, that pressing the keys on the Jewish Holiday is strictly forbidden since pressing a key immediately closes an electrical circuit and instructs the microcontroller to carry out an action. Pressing the key is forbidden just as all manipulation of electricity is forbidden on Shabbos and Jewish Holidays. There can be a Torah law violation immediately upon pressing the key even if no ‘fire’ is created. This operation is not considered gramma.
Thus it was decided that the use of the Sabbath Mode on an oven to change the temperature of an oven on the Jewish Holiday represents an assault on the sanctity of such Holiday. For example, opening the oven door may immediately turn on the heating elements because of a detected decrease in temperature, an act clearly forbidden on the Jewish Holiday.
Thus, there is a need for cooking devices to have a means for avoiding such religious violations. The existing control systems do not allow the cooking appliance to start after the Jewish Holiday (Yom Tov) commences, except for possibly the use of a usual ‘delayed start’ within 12 or 24 hours from initial setting, nor start or restart on the second day of the Jewish Holiday, or the Jewish Holiday if it follows the Sabbath, or turn off for the Sabbath if it follows a Jewish Holiday. Additionally, existing control systems for the Jewish Holidays or Sabbath are generally not designed as an after-market retrofit to an existing cooking appliance. Still further, existing control systems are not adapted for use in non-computer controlled or digitally controlled cooking appliances such as, warming drawers, cooktop burners or heating elements.
Possibly relevant references are:    U.S. Pat. No. 7,069,091 to Williamson describes a microwave oven with a controller that stores recipe programs and operates the generator in accordance with the recipe program.    U.S. Pat. No. 7,002,109 to Klask describes an automatic stove timer and alarm apparatus and method of use with an electrical circuit that provides a timer that is enabled for continuous repetitive fixed timing cycles.    U.S. Pat. No. 6,703,591 to Daum et al. describes a control system that: has a large market share of Shabbos/Yom Tov compliant ovens. The appliance is operable in a normal mode and a Jewish Holiday mode. The appliance includes an electronic control system and a control interface panel for user selection of appliance features. The control interface panel includes a plurality of input keys and at least one display including a plurality of indicators for indicating appliance features and settings. The system provides for delaying a display of at least one of the indicators for a randomly determined time period.    U.S. Pat. No. 6,660,982 to Thorneywork, et al., describes a programmable cooking system that includes several cooking devices, e.g., microwave or regular ovens. It is directed to the catering industry delivering a given range of meals with maximum speed and efficiency. The programming includes instructions for specific items and a specific oven to preclude the operator from having to manually program cooking sequences for each item into its oven, e.g. defrost, microwave cook and conventionally brown. The operator can specify the oven and cooking sequence with the push of a button.    U.S. Pat. No. 6,473,661 to Wollner describes a home automation system for automatically controlling the electric lights and appliances in a Jewish family's home or Jewish institution. The system is, preset to generate regular schedules for Shabbos and Jewish Holidays based on the Jewish calendar and may also generate regular weekday scheduled events. Special schedules such as vacation mode, guest mode, summer mode and the like may be added and adjusted by the user as well. The special schedules or modes may be manually activated by a mechanical device outside the computer. Updated schedules are reported to a remotely located monitoring system.    U.S. Pat. No. 6,066,837 to McCormick et al. describes a Sabbath compliant cooking apparatus that deactivates functions, tones and indicators on a double (over/under) oven during the Sabbath. The controller also imposes a delayed response to opening and closing of a door.    U.S. Pat. No. 5,942,816 to Carter describes a precautionary timer for a kitchen range surface element.    U.S. Pat. No. 5,808,278 to Moon et al describes an appliance capable of being operated in compliance with the Orthodox Jew requirement that no work shall be done on the Sabbath. The appliance has a control system that monitors and controls all of the components of the appliance. The control system can be activated so that it prevents all visual displays and audible alarms from being actuated by the user during the Sabbath. The control system also prevents any actions of the user from causing the machine to do work.    U.S. Pat. No. 5,841,112 to Brooks et al describes a service diagnostic system for an electronic cooking appliance.    U.S. Pat. No. 5,693,245 to Clizbe describes an electric range surface burner controller that when the selected amount of time expires, e.g., 0-60 minutes, the burner is shutoff. No delayed start is taught or suggested.    U.S. Pat. No. 4,756,336 to Amezcua describes an electro-mechanical device that converts an ordinary manually operated stove to a timer controlled stove.    U.S. Pat. No. 4,521,869 to Moss describes a program timer for building heating, air conditioning, water pumps, etc.    US Patent Publication No. 2003/0080113 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,069,091 to Williamson describes an oven having a controller that stores a plurality of recipes and operates the heat generator in accordance with a recipe program.    US Patent Publication No. 2005/0133353 to Whitman describes a Sabbath Switch Cover to selectively disable or enable the internal lighting system of a kitchen appliance.